How has this issue been around for 5+ years, and never got even a call out in the documentation for

gradleProperty

? Just wasted hours on this 😞 https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/23572 https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/13302

Recently they added a 'best practice' about not using multiple

gradle.properties

files in a single build. https://github.com/gradle/gradle/pull/34260#discussion_r2222827257

That's imho not the right interpretation. Multiple properties files was a well supported pattern. Then they broke it by adding

providers.gradleProperty

which does not read Gradle properties but Project properties and only those from the root project and above, but as far as I know halfway intended. And instead of fixing the unintuitive change, they now added a best practice to avoid the behavior by not having subproject property files. While the replacement also lacks behind, because now you cannot override

propertyB

for

:util

using a

-P

argument or similar, but now you have to use an init script to change it. :-/ If subproject property files should not be supported, then they should at least be deprecated.